Currently browsing posts about: Trans-fat

Fat remains in the news. Which ones are health, and which not? FoodNavigator-USA collects its articles on the topic. My thoughts: Beyond that, food fats are mixtures of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated fatty acids, of the omega-3, -6, and -9 varieties. And then there are the hydrogenated trans-fats. These variations make fats complicated.

One attribute of fats is not complicated: fat has 9 calories/gram compared to 4 for protein and carbohydrate. A tablespoon of oil, butter, lard, or tallow has about 100 calories. If you are concerned about energy balance, watch out for fat calories (and the other ones count too).

FoodNavigator’s Special Edition: Healthy fats
Fat – we are told – is back. But what kind of fat, and can you have too much of a good thing? Is the science changing on saturated fats? Is whole milk a better choice, or should we stick to low fat dairy? Is coconut oil as healthy as some marketers make out, and is the pressure off to reduce fat now all eyes are on added sugar? Get the lowdown on fat in this special edition…

Chewing the fat: Need help navigating the healthy fats minefield?: Fats are often classed into good, bad and ugly categories. But do we know for sure which are which, and are consumers, food marketers, and health professionals all on the same page on this? Is the science really changing on saturated fats? And is the keto diet backed by sound science?.. Read

What’s trending in the oils and fats aisle? From ghee to pumpkin seed oil: Ghee – a ‘clarified butter’ produced by boiling butter and pouring off the butterfat, leaving milk sugar (lactose) and protein (casein and whey) behind – is very high in saturated fat, but it’s gaining traction among shoppers looking for something new in the butters and spreads aisle, says specialty oils brand Carrington Farms… Read

Is saturated fat really ‘back?’ In short, no, argue experts at ICVN 2018:“So the ketogenic diet, sure, it will cause you to lose weight in the short term. So would cholera, or a cocaine binge, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” observed Dr David Katz at the 7th International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition (ICVN) this week. “There is more than one way to eat badly and the American public is committed to exploring them all.”.. Watch now

Replacing partially hydrogenated oils: In conversation with Qualisoy: With the June 18 deadline to drop partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) fast approaching, most food manufacturers have found alternatives, from palm oil, to liquid oils blended with palm fractions. But R&D work on interesterified high oleic oils that perform even better in some challenging applications than first and second wave solutions is ongoing, says soy industry expert Qualisoy… Read

Jason Huffman, Helena Bottemiller Evich, and Jenny Hopkinson of Politico Pro Agriculture have published their end-of-year assessment of game-changing events in food and agriculture policy last year. Here’s their list:

Avian flu blew up the U.S. egg industry.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal got done.

The battle over the Dietary Guidelines turned even nastier.

The FDA banned most uses of trans fat.

The FDA said a genetically engineered fish is safe to eat.

The EPA released its final Waters of the U.S. rule, inciting the wrath of multiple industries, states and lawmakers.

A federal judge sent peanut company executives to jail for decades for their part in a giant salmonella outbreak.

The FDA released major rules to promote the safety of produce and imports.

The FDA doubled down on added sugars on food labels, proposing daily values for the listings.

I’ve discussed most of these on this site (all except Waters of the US).

I can’t wait to see what this year brings—more of the same, for sure, but what else? Stay tuned.

Funding: Supported by USDA, Dairy Management Inc., Nestlé, and Dairy Australia. The funding organizations had no role in the conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Background

Everyone agrees that hydrogenated fats containing trans fatty acids (industrial trans fatty acids or iTFAs) raise the risk of LDL-cholesterol (the bad one) and, therefore, the risk of coronary artery disease. But what about the naturally occurring trans fats that occur in meat and dairy products as a result of bacterial hydrogenation of fats in the rumens of ruminant animals (ruminant trans fatty acids or rTFAs)?

Some studies suggest that rTFAs do not raise the risk of coronary disease. This study tests that hypothesis. It found that the major rTFA, vaccenic acid, does indeed raise risk factors for coronary artery disease almost or more than do iTFAs.

To make sense of the study, you need to know:

In iTFAs, the two major trans fats are elaidic acid 25%, and vaccenic acid 10%

In rTFAs, the trans fats are vaccenic acid 45% and elaidic acid 5%

Therefore, vaccenic acid is the major trans fat in rTFAs

What about Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA, or rumenic acid)?

The study also looked at intake of another rTFA, conjugated linoleic acid, which seems to have more benign properties but is present in such small amounts that it hardly makes a difference. Although this study found CLA to have no effect on risk factors for coronary heart disease, a study from independently funded investigators judged it to have effects similar to that of other rTFAs.

What took so long to get this study published?

David Baer, who works for USDA, is the senior author on this paper. I saw a slide presentation he did on this study in 2010. Its results were already available.

In 2012, Dr. Baer wrote about ruminant trans fats, disclosed his dairy industry funding, but also did not report these results. He concluded:

It is still difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the role of rTFAs in modulating risk of cardiovascular disease as mediated through changes in LDL and HDL cholesterol. Intake of these fatty acids is typically low in the diet.

I heard about this study last summer and wondered whether its funders were holding up publication. I called Dr. Baer and asked. He said the funders had nothing to do with the delay. Instead, life had intervened—collaborators left, he was busy with other things, and was having trouble getting the paper published.

The bottom line

The study was done with purified vaccenic acid, not dairy fat, in amounts higher than those likely to be consumed in diets. The authors say

Evidence…suggests that VA [vaccenic acid] consumed in amounts and foods typically found in the diet is inversely or not associated with CVD risk.

That’s one possible interpretation, but check the title of the editorial accompanying the paper: “In equal amounts, the major ruminant trans fatty acid is as bad for LDL cholesterol as industrially produced trans fatty acids, but the latter are easier to remove from foods.”

The funders of this study must be disappointed. It was undoubtedly difficult and expensive to do, since it involved synthesis of pure vaccenic acid and a clinical trial of more than 100 subjects.

The funders must have hoped the study would show vaccenic acid to be as benign or even healthier than conjugated linoleic acid. They bet wrong on this one.

This brings the score to 80:7 (sponsored studies with results favorable to the sponsor vs. those unfavorable).

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations are taking place this week in Maui, as usual, in deep secret.

Doug Palmer of Pro Politico describes the major food issues: dairy, origin names, pork, rice, and sugar. The issues come down to market share. Every country wants to protect its own products but have free access to markets in other countries.

Although not a food, tobacco best explains why the TPP makes people nervous. US tobacco companies want the TPP to open new markets. But one of the TPP provisions is said to allow corporations sue governments that pass rules that might hurt the corporation’s business. Philip Morris sued Australia over its “plain packaging” law and is now suing Great Britain.

The US position is supposedly that a country’s measures to protect the health of humans, animals, or plants should not be in violation of the TPP, and that challenges to tobacco-control measures should be cleared with TPP partners. Malaysia, for example, has proposed to exempt tobacco-control measures from challenges under TPP.

July 27, 2015 (SAN FRANCISCO) – The Obama administration has removed Malaysia from the list of worst offenders for human trafficking and forced labor today, one day after The Wall Street Journal published an extensive report on human trafficking and forced labor on Malaysian palm oil plantations that directly supply major U.S. companies. Malaysia is one of 12 nations in the contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, and inclusion of a country with the lowest ranking in the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report would be problematic for the administration.

And then, there’s the trans-fat connection: The US demand for replacement of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils has pushed Malaysia and other palm-oil countries to produce more palm oil, faster.

Palm oil has been repeatedly named on the U.S. Department of Labor’s list of industries that involve forced and child labor, most recently in 2014. Activists have blamed palm-oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia for large-scale deforestation and human-rights abuses. Oil palm growers respond that the palm tree, a high-yield crop, is a useful tool for socioeconomic development.

The TPP is hard to understand, not least because negotiations are secret. In giving the President the go-ahead to sign the agreement, Congress made two stipulations:

Congress must be notified 90 days in advance of signing.

The terms of the agreement must be disclosed to the public 60 days prior to signing.

I’m still catching up on what happened during the week I was offline in Cuba (more on that later this week).

One big event was the FDA’s announcement that it no longer considers artificial trans fat as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for human consumption, meaning that processed food manufacturers need to get rid of it. They get three years to do so.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is worried about the half-gram loophole: “FDA memos show…80 percent of these uses [of partially hydrogenated oils containing trans fat] don’t require disclosure of the presence of trans fat because of the half-gram loophole.”

Politico Pro reports that “food industry lawyers are already scouring the document in hopes of finding some way to shield them from legal action” and that a ban on trans fat will increase demand for palm oil causing widespread deforestation across Indonesia and Malaysia.

I vote for the FDA’s move as a long-awaited step in the right direction. Progress!

Addition, July 5: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has a somewhat different view. Trans fats are already gone, thanks to consumers, and all the FDA has done is to set up a basis for class-action suits.

Why am I surprised? I thought we were done with this one. I didn’t think it was all that difficult to find substitutes for partially hydrogenated oils. When trans fats went on food labels, most companies didn’t take long to go trans-fat free.

Now food companies are complaining that the FDA has gone too far, needs to allow companies to keep small amounts in foods, and doesn’t really have the authority to revoke GRAS status.

As a reminder of what this is about, here’s a taste of what I said about trans fats in What to Eat:

Trans fats are not normal. Hydrogenation causes some of the hydrogens in unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids to flip abnormally from the same side of the carbon chain (in Latin, “cis”) to the opposite side (“trans”). The normal cis unsaturated fatty acids are flexible, which is why they are liquid; they bend and flow around each other. But the change to trans causes unsaturated fatty acids to stiffen. They behave a lot like saturated fatty acids in the body, where they can raise cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease.

Mind you, this is not new information. My trans fat file has papers on heart disease risk dating back to the mid-1970s. In 1975, for example, British scientists suggested that one reason poor people in England had higher rates of heart disease was that they so often ate fish-and-chips fried in partially hydrogenated oils. Since then, researchers have consistently found trans fats to be just as bad–or worse–than saturated fats from the standpoint of heart disease risk.

My first reaction: Isn’t trans-fat already out of the food supply? Hasn’t this been one of the food industry’s greatest public health achievements?

Once the FDA started to require trans-fat to be listed on food labels, food companies quickly stopped using partially hydrogenated oils (the source of trans-fat) and found healthier substitutes. That’s why most food labels list zero grams trans-fat.

But the FDA allows food labels to say zero trans-fat if its amount is below 0.5 gram per serving.

Some manufacturers are still using a little. This new initiative will encourage them to get rid of those last little bits.

Contrary to the New York Times headline, this is not exactly a ban on trans-fat. If trans-fat is no longer GRAS, manufacturers can still file a food additive petition to continue using partially hydrogenated oils.

The Federal Register notice asks for input for the next 60 days.

I say congratulations to all:

To food companies who worked hard to find ways to substitute healthier fats for trans-fats.

To the FDA for finally taking care of the trans-fat 0.5-gram loophole.

To Center for Science in the Public Interest for bringing health problems with trans-fat to public attention.

To all of the researchers who did the science linking trans-fat to higher LDL-cholesterol levels and to heart disease risk.

To the New York City health department for banning trans-fats from use in city restaurants.

Americans will be healthier as a result of all of your efforts.

Resources

At the moment, the FDA has not yet posted its Federal Register notice on the GRAS status of trans-fat. When it does, the notice should be available here.